Borders and Legitimacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-47
Author(s):  
Pavlos Eleftheriadis
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Constitutional Justice ◽  
Equal Citizenship

How do borders affect political legitimacy? Some ‘globalist’ views believe that borders are morally illegitimate. By contrast, ‘political’ views believe that state borders and political institutions create a morally significant distinction between fellow citizens and others. This chapter argues that shared political agency within self-governing states has moral value, such that ignoring it is an act of ethically unacceptable paternalism. An independent political community that meets basic tests of constitutional justice is a ‘normative people’ with its own moral standing, which creates moral duties of respect. States and their borders play a unique role for political legitimacy: they create stable relations of reciprocity and equal citizenship that can only exist within the framework of a political community organized under the rule of a lawful jurisdiction.

Democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludvig Beckman
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
The People ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Egalitarian Attitude ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Normative Issues

Democracy is a term that is used to denote a variety of distinct objects and ideas. Democracy describes either a set of political institutions or an ideal of collective self-rule. Democracy can also be short for a normative principle of either legitimacy or justice. Finally, democracy might be used to denote an egalitarian attitude. These four uses of the term should be kept distinct and raises separate conceptual and normative issues. The value of democracy, whether democratic political institutions or democratic self-rule, is either instrumental, non-instrumental, or both. The non-instrumental value of democracy derives either from the alleged fairness of majority rule or from the value of the social relationships enabled by participation in democratic procedures. The instrumental value of democracy lends support from a growing body of empirical research. Yet, the claim that democracy has a positive causal effect on public goods is inconclusive with respect to the moral justification of democratic institutions. Normative reasons for democracy’s instrumental value must instead appeal to the fact that it contributes to equality, liberty, truth, or the realization of popular will. Democracy as a principle of either political legitimacy or justice is a normative view that evades concerns with the definition and value of democracy. Normative democracy is a claim about the conditions either for legitimacy or justice of either public authority or coercion. Debates in normative democracy are largely divorced from the conceptual and empirical concerns that inform studies of democracy elsewhere. The boundaries of the people entitled to participate in collective decisions is a question that applies to all four uses of democracy. The boundary question raises three distinct issues. The first is the extent of inclusion required among the members of the unit. The second is if membership in the unit is necessary for inclusion or if people that are not recognized as members are on certain conditions also entitled to participate. The third and final issue concerns the boundaries of the unit itself.

Nationalisme, Objectiviteit en Subjectiviteit

Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-214
Author(s):  
Tim Heysse
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Metaphysical Status

Historians and theoreticians of nationalism and nationalist movements are perplexed by the fact that so much of what nationalists believe is evidently not the case. One example of this concerns the ontological or metaphysical status of the nation: whether nations as a form of political community are in the very nature of things or whether they are rather a recent way of imagining the political community.I question the meaning terms such as 'natural', 'imagined' and 'objective'/'subjective' have when we are talking about the nation as the foundation of political legitimacy. Ido this by explaining what meaning those terms have in the philosophical reconstruction of interpretation and communication by the American philosopher Donald Davidson.

Is Political Engagement Better Than Sex?

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Berger
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Attention Deficit ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
Better Than

This chapter examines the most prominent arguments for political engagement's importance to democratic polities, including those put forward by Alexis de Tocqueville, and shows that each presents circumstantial and ultimately inconclusive evidence. It first considers the benefits that political engagement offers to individuals and communities before discussing how essential those benefits are to the health of liberal democracy. It then evaluates defenses of political engagement's intrinsic and instrumental value and proceeds to build a case for the importance of political engagement that can stand up to critical scrutiny. It contends that were should avoid very low political engagement because it might badly undermine a democracy's claims to political legitimacy. Instead, we should care about the increased, voluntary political engagement that might ensue if political institutions were more responsive, political education were more effective, and if our attention deficit democracy could be treated through liberal means.

scholarly journals Political Responses to Economic Shocks

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yotam Margalit
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Economic Shocks ◽  
Transient Effect ◽  
Sharp Drop ◽  
Political Views

How does the experience of economic shocks affect individuals' political views and voting behavior? Inspired partly by the fallout of the financial crisis of 2008, research on this question has proliferated. Findings from studies covering a broadening range of countries and economic contexts highlight several notable patterns. Economic shocks—e.g., job loss or sharp drop in income—exert a significant and theoretically predictable, if often transient, effect on political attitudes. In contrast, the effect on voting behavior is more limited in magnitude and its manifestations less understood. Negative economic shocks tend to increase support for more expansive social policy and for redistribution, strengthening the appeal of the left. But such shocks also tend to decrease trust in political institutions, thus potentially driving the voters to support radical or populist parties, or demobilizing them altogether. Further research is needed to detect the conditions that lead to these distinct voting outcomes.

Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Martin Lipset
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Existence And Stability ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Determinants Of Action

The conditions associated with the existence and stability of democratic society have been a leading concern of political philosophy. In this paper the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses. In its concern with conditions—values, social institutions, historical events—external to the political system itself which sustain different general types of political systems, the paper moves outside the generally recognized province of political sociology. This growing field has dealt largely with the internal analysis of organizations with political goals, or with the determinants of action within various political institutions, such as parties, government agencies, or the electoral process. It has in the main left to the political philosopher the larger concern with the relations of the total political system to society as a whole.

Imagined Institutions: The Symbolic Power of Formal Rules in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Slavic Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 944-969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlo Basta
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Stated Preference ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Communities

Through a detailed examination of institutional discourses in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article demonstrates that formal political institutions may play a more layered role than is allowed by existing theories of nationalist and ethnic conflict. Competing institutional preferences of Bosniak, Serb, and Croat elites are not simply instruments for the achievement of collective or individual goals. They are symbolically salient expressions of collective identity as well. For Bosniak elites, the stated preference for a non-ethnicized territorial framework and majoritarian central government suggest the vision of a multiethnic, but not institutionally multinational,Bosnianpolitical community. Their Serb and Croat counterparts, by contrast, insist on the continued “ethnicization” of the territorial architecture and the central government apparatus. These preferences express an understanding of Bosnia as a state of three discrete political communities. Any attempts at comprehensive institutional reform must thus reckon with the opposing and deeply embedded visions of institutions-as-symbols. The theoretical implications of this work go well beyond the Bosnian case.

scholarly journals COURTS, COURTIERS, AND CULTURE IN TUDOR ENGLAND

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 703-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
NATALIE MEARS
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
The Relationship

Geoffrey Elton's model of Tudor politics, which emphasized the importance of political institutions and which dominated our understanding of Tudor politics for much of the second half of the twentieth century, has been challenged by a number of historians for over twenty years. They have re-emphasized the importance of social connections and cultural influences and turned attention away from studying the privy council to studying the court. In doing so, they have gone back to re-examine earlier approaches by Sir John Neale and Conyers Read which Elton had challenged. Yet, these new socially and culturally derived approaches, recently labelled ‘New Tudor political history’, remain varied and its practitioners sometimes at odds with each other. Focusing on both established seminal works and recent research, this review considers the different elements of these approaches in relation to Tudor court politics. It assesses the methodological problems they raise and identifies what shortcomings still remain. It demonstrates that Tudor politics are increasingly defined as based on social networks rather than institutional bodies, making issues of access to, and intimacy with, the monarch central. Our understanding has been further enhanced by exploration of political culture and its relationship to political action. However, the review points to the need to integrate more fully the political role of women and the relationship between the court and the wider political community into our understanding of Tudor politics, as well as place England into a European context.

scholarly journals Beyond Commerce: Women and Power in Traditional Nigerian Market

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Adebukola Foluke Osunyikanmi
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The Political ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Traditional Market ◽  
Women And Power

<p><em>Powerlessness of women, gender inequality and discrimination against women are concepts that often dominate political discourse. These perspectives on relations between men and women critically trivialize the unique role of women in the socio-economic and political development of Africa.</em></p><p><em>The traditional market, a physical location where traders display and sell their wares, has always been under the dominance of women. Historically, legal and political structures were institutionalized in such markets with a view to protecting the interest of all trading members who were mainly women. In contemporary dispensation, they still use those structures to settle disputes among themselves and [also negotiate for amenities from their governments. </em></p><p><em>This paper, using primary and secondary data, examines the efficacy of the traditional legal, social and political institutions provided by the market; the extent to which the institutions have facilitated the inclusion of women in the political space; and measures that will help strengthen their effectiveness.</em></p>

scholarly journals Nationalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umut Özkırımlı
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Equal Citizenship

Nationalism is the belief that the interests and values of a particular nation are prior to, and often superior to, those of others. Etymologically, the origins of the term can be traced back to the Latin word natio, or “something born,” which was used by Romans to refer to a community of foreigners. It is commonly believed that in its modern sense of “love for a particular nation,” the term was first used in 1798. Nationalism refers to both an ideology and a political movement. In the context of the French Revolution, nationalism has come to be associated with the more inclusive idea of popular sovereignty based on shared and equal citizenship. Later, under the impact of German Romantic thought, it has also been connected to exclusivist notions of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. As a political movement, nationalism has often entailed the fusion of these two ideals, presupposing a world composed of “nation-states” in which, at least in theory, each nation has a right to a state of its own, later called the principle of national self-determination. Nationalism has outlived the expectations of a great many thinkers, both on the right and the left, who predicted its imminent demise, and reasserted itself as a powerful tool for mobilization in the wake of the end of the Cold War, inspiring or energizing a vast array of political projects, from independentism and isolationism to authoritarianism and populism. Despite attempts to pool sovereignty in supranational or transnational bodies, mostly to counter the corrosive and uneven impact of globalization, nationalism remains the fundamental organizing principle of interstate order and the ultimate source of political legitimacy. For many, it is also the taken-for-granted context of everyday life and a readily available cognitive and discursive frame to make sense of the world that surrounds them.

scholarly journals Effects of Iraq’s Parliamentary Gender Quota on Women’s Political Mobilization and Legitimacy Post-2003

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Huda Al-Tamimi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact

Parliamentary gender quotas have become increasingly prevalent since the 1990s, yet in-depth research illuminating their effects on women’s political agency remains scarce. Iraq’s political evolution offers a unique perspective on feminist, democratization, and gender quota scholarship as related to Middle Eastern women in politics since the US and allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. Throughout Iraq’s modern history, Iraqi women’s ability to pursue legitimate political agency has fluctuated with changes in the country’s political climate. The 2003 invasion set in motion sweeping reforms to the judicial, legislative, and executive governing powers. Women’s potential role in the emerging polity was enhanced by enactment of an electoral gender quota stipulating no less than twenty-five percent of seats in the Iraq parliament to be filled by women. This article presents research that sought to elucidate the impact of that quota on women’s political mobilization since 2003. Data collected included televised interviews, reports, and media articles that were qualitatively analyzed using a critical literary theory approach. Analysis was aided by NVivo qualitative analysis software. The findings indicate that although the gender quota has nominally increased descriptive representation, it has proven insufficient to support women’s substantive and symbolic representation. Issues of women’s socioeconomic position, lack of cooperation among female members of parliament, and ongoing security threats must be addressed for women to achieve full political legitimacy.

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